The Cold Mists
by Berende
Summary: Watson cannot escape the ghosts of Reichenbach even back home when his own mind troubles him with agonizing nightmares. This story deals with one of them. Oneshot.


The cold, white, foggy vapours swirled and coiled in no rhythm against the loud rushing of water masses towards the gaping maw of the pool beneath, filled with lifeless rocks, like razor-sharp teeth scattered heedlessly in a sickening mouth. The white, chilling steam seemed to be everywhere as John Watson stumbled among the rocks and cliffs on the shore. His clothes were dripping with water although he had stayed firmly on the soil and his insides were burning hot in comparison to that deadly cold.

"_Holmes!"_ he cried with all force he could muster, and yet the roar of the waterfall drowned his voice as easily as it had been a mere child's whisper. He felt powerless against those cruel falls, those maddeningly loud and consuming rivers.

"_Holmes!"_ he cried again and collapsed on his knees, having spent every ounce of air in his lungs for that desperate call. He gasped and looked wildly around but all he could see was white. White steam. Stone-cold steam. His limbs were stiffening and it was difficult to bend his fingers; the chill was starting to reach his bones.

He looked at the water, churning in the pool, under the huge mass of white, so unbearably white, vapour. The falling water made the surface churn as if the water itself was in agony, tortured by the rapid movement of its kin running to it, screaming in pain. The turmoil began underwater and surfaced in great big boils of water, like the dark, still pool had been troubled by a plague as severe as any. And the disgusting white blisters burst and ran away with the river, carrying the disease to other pools, other ponds, other agonized and lost souls.

John looked around in despair. He was alone. So alone and cold, terribly cold. He didn't feel the hard rocks under his knees and palms as he tried to catch his breath on all fours; nothing felt like anything. The white mist blinded him and the blunt roar of the falls deafened all other sounds until it felt like his mind was full of the dull noise, as if he was not allowed to hear anything else ever again. And then, through it all and amidst it all, he heard a whisper. A very quiet whisper, a whisper so silent it could hardly be recognized; with the crushing flow of the water a whisper came to him, and it bore his name with it.

John rose numbly on his feet and listened, tried to see. He was sure he heard it, it could not have been the water alone; the sighing whisper had been too real. And it repeated, silent as ever, barely audible, but he heard it again and again:

_Watson..._

He swallowed and his heart pounded loud in the confinements of his chest, trying to break free. Its beating shook him and he swayed in place.

"_Holmes?"_ he breathed out. His eyes shot from rock to stone, shore to river; he wanted to see, he needed to see. The white, wet fog curled around him and seemed to open up for him. And there, lying on the river bank, he saw the form of a man.

With strength found somewhere else than in his body, John rushed to the man. His old wounds didn't hurt him, his new cuts didn't bother him – even the pain in his soul seemed to have evaporated in the still moment that took him to the shore. His heart seemed to have stopped beating and for that little while he did not feel the need to breathe.

And there he was. John knelt beside the dark-haired man lying face down in the shallow water, arms spread among the bigger rocks as if trying to clutch to them. His clothing was torn but John knew it, knew it so well, knew that jacket, those trousers, those shoes. He grabbed the man with all his power and hauled him to the bank, and turned him around.

All breath left John Watson. All air left him and was replaced by that cruel, damp mist that chilled his insides and made him gasp and almost lose his consciousness. He felt as numb as he had ever felt in his life, and yet there was not a single trace of numbness in his mind or in his heart as he looked upon the man he had just pulled out of the icy water.

_It was Holmes._

Those features John would have recognized anywhere, anytime. The curved nose, the decisive chin, the shallow cheeks, the now slightly parted lips which had so often twitched in knowing smile, the dark hair now wet and out of its usual, sleek form, darker than ever against the skin now as white as the mocking vapours. But it was the eyes that John knew the best.

And the eyes were fixed on him as the lifted Holmes' head a bit. Those grey, piercing eyes had lost their glint, the sparkle they caught when something flashed in that brilliant mind; no more did they flicker and shine, no longer were they darkened beyond measure by anger or the foul mood that took hold of him every now and then. No more did they gleam in the dead of night when the hunt was afoot. The light behind them had been quenched, lost, drowned under endless streams of water colder than ice.

And still those eyes bored straight into John. They seared his heart and severed it in half; they cut into his soul and tore it mercilessly into smithereens. John could only stare back, even though it felt like all his old wounds had been slashed open again, and a dozen new ones created at the spot. Such pain he seldom remembered and this time he was unable to escape it. He couldn't lose consciousness, no matter how hard his reason screamed at his body to do so. All he could do was look, and hope against all hopes that the light would return to those once so alive eyes. He would gladly have welcomed even that vacant, faraway, drugged look those eyes sometimes adapted and that John had always regretted seeing – not for his own sake but for Holmes' health.

"_Holmes",_ John whispered and his voice rang inside him, in the air, above the roaring waters, it grew louder and louder until it echoed hollow in his wounded heart and yelled painfully in every corner of his mind. In vain he stared into those dead eyes, for they did not come back to him, the breath did not return to his lungs, the life never came to his limbs and his heart remained still. His intelligence was smothered in death, and everything fell into darkness.

And yet the darkness would not come. The mist, whiter than white, lingered everywhere, it coiled and swirled and danced tauntingly around John and Holmes. But John did not see it. He stared into the clear, grey eyes until they began to fade from his sight as burning tears blurred his vision. He blinked rapidly for he was not willing to let go like that. He would not close his eyes and _not_ _see_; he wouldn't let it fall apart like that while he still had his friend right there, right next to him.

But he couldn't help it. The power of his grief overcame him and the treacherous tears clouded his vision and took his friend's features away from him. He pulled his cold body in his arms and stared at the blank view in front of him until everything faded into a white mass of vapour and tears. He felt as though he was blinded by it, finally.

A sound from the water made him stir after a while that had felt like an eternity. The sound was separate from the dull rushing of the water masses, or from the the running river. John looked to his right and terror froze whatever was left of his shattered heart, for out of the hellish maw, the icy water and the cruel fog rose a dark figure of a man. He was clad in black and his clothes waved about him as if they had never felt the touch of water. John stared as the man moved slowly towards him, and a scream of utter horror formed inside him but never left his lips.

The face of that man was beyond anything John had seen or would ever see. White as the fog around him, the man looked like a ghost, and a ghost he must have been. He could not have survived, not when his friend didn't – and yet, there was the Professor, walking towards him with a face ready to freeze Hell over and strike anyone dead just by a look. His mouth was twisted in a terrible grimace revealing his teeth, and sharp they seemed to John, as sharp as the razor rocks in the pool from which he was emerging. The snarl of that mouth was too terrible to think of, and yet John was forced to look. He could not move, his arms were locked around his friend and he couldn't have moved them had he tried – the mists had frozen his joints and bones and chilled him to place. Moriarty's face was a wretched sight; it looked waxen and dead, and his crazed eyes were fixed on John and glowing with a diabolical fire. The merciless, murderous look never left them when he reached his bony hand and grabbed Holmes by his arm.

"_No!"_ John cried as the ghoul of a man began to pull his nemesis down, determined to take him with him to the churning, gaping, freezing hell-pit. John held onto his friend's body as tight as he could. He would not let Moriarty take him, not now that John had finally found him. He tried to kick the skeletal horror pawing at his friend, but the mist was cruel. It had seeped inside him, laid itself on him, coiled itself around him; it would have suffocated him had it had the power; but it had made his limbs weak and powerless, slaves to the cold, misty arms that were now reaching for him everywhere around him. The falls were laughing a rumbling mockery, the river was hissing a venomous jeer, and the Professor was pulling Holmes towards him with inhuman strength.

And the Mist was on Moriarty's side. It enveloped John in its white shroud and bent him forward; it pushed him closer to the Professor and made him loosen his grip on his friend. Panic seized him as he saw Holmes being effortlessly pulled underwater.

"_NO!" _John cried and tried to catch him in vain; and the Professor's hellish face came closer as his freezing, white, bony fingers clutched his throat; and a coldness above everything else overcame his every cell from his deathly touch, and he saw Holmes' hand disappear in the fiendish pool... The falls were roaring in unison with him and with the Professor, the deafening, maddening rush of merciless water drowned all and everything and took over his mind, occupied his thoughts, roared with all the pitiless might in the world and there was nothing he could do to save him, to save himself –

John Watson woke up to his own cry of terror and sat up in his bed. It took him a few panicked seconds to realize he was in his dark bedroom and that the roar of the waterfall, which wouldn't fade away, was the heavy rain pounding the roof and the streets outside his windows. He was panting and the cold sweat glistened on his skin as though he had indeed just left the cold mists behind him.

Watson could but stare in front of him, trying to catch his breath and gather himself. Three and a half months it had been since his lonely return from Switzerland and still the nightmares troubled him from time to time. Not as often as in the first weeks, but they seemed to be worsening in quality. He looked to his left and saw that Mary wasn't beside him – a touch of fear came over him until he remembered she had traveled to see her friend in the countryside. She hadn't wanted to leave him. Not so soon after Reichenbach, not so soon after she had last visited her friends. But her health was wavering and Watson had practically forced her to leave the fumes of London and breathe some fresh air for a change.

"_Doctor's stubbornness", _she had smiled and left with an uneasy heart. Watson had seen her off and assured her he was quite fine – although they both knew he wasn't. Mary's health was his priority now, and he knew it was better for her to leave the city while the symptoms were only starting to show, not when she'd fall ill. _Heaven forbid that, _he had thought to himself, but as a doctor he had to consider all possibilities because he knew they existed.

Sitting alone in his bed, Watson was shivering. His hands were shaking as an after-effect of the nightmare and his dampened skin made him feel cold. He felt positively miserable. How he wished Mary could have been there now, soothing him with one reassuring glance, telling him it would all go away in time. But she wasn't. Not this time. And if he was completely honest with himself, he was actually glad. He knew it pained her to see him waking up with nightmares – it had happened occasionally during their marriage for no veteran is truly free from the war. Every time she had been most compassionate and as much as he appreciated it, he couldn't help feeling embarrassed and weak. He did not want her to think he was weak, he wanted to be there for _her_, he wanted her to be happy – she didn't need to burden herself with his imagination. Sharing pain and worries with his wife he accepted and supported fully, but to share with her something his own mind had conjured, something unreal... he was uncomfortable with it.

He cursed his own imagination. His nightmares were always so real. Always. He never dreamed of giant spiders chasing him down or flying and falling, or people from irrational places and times coming after him, or something else that would be easy to separate from the real world... his nightmares always retained some touch to reality. Well, maybe dreaming about the dead Professor emerging from the water wasn't very realistic – he shuddered at the memory – but the way he had approached had felt so real. He had not breathed fire or ridden a horse of the netherworld, he had come and he had grabbed him with the bare strength of his hands. Had he somehow survived, Watson was sure he would have looked just like that. He could have looked like that.

Watson swallowed. And Holmes... it had felt so real. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself, but the lifeless body of his friend wouldn't stop haunting his vision. So real... the cold body against his, his dead eyes staring into nothingness and seeing everything... the hollow grief upon seeing him like that... but it was a dream, it wasn't real, it would pass...

... except the grief didn't fade away like the vivid images of the dream slowly began to. Watson put his legs over the bedside and drew deep breath a few times. He had to get up and walk a little. He couldn't get sleep now, if at all. He paced slowly to the window and peered behind the curtains at the foul weather and the dim little streetlight outside. The rain hammered his window and he couldn't see much.

_If only there had been a body,_ he thought, heart as hollow as his dream had been. If only he had been found... maybe then he wouldn't dream of finding him like that, if he just had seen it for real, if he had... Watson sighed heavily. There would never be a body. Or, perhaps, after years, some poor villager somewhere would go to a river or a lake and discover him, find him, finally. But he wouldn't look the same, he would be trodden over by time and earth and water, and Watson was quite sure that wasn't the way he wanted to remember his friend. Or perhaps his nightmares were just preparing him for worse nightly adventures, he though bitterly and prayed his subconscious would never be so cruel to him. It was cruel enough already.

The rain hammered the windows and the rooftops of all the miserable buildings in London. The sound was like a distant echo of the Reichenbach, of the falls in his nightmares. The city seemed so cold, so alien to him. What was there to it, anyway? Mary was beginning to feel ill here, fights on the streets were as common as the fog, criminal scum dwelt and lurked in the shadowy corners and foggy alleys. And there was no pair of quick, grey eyes to see them, to stop them, to enjoy the city that felt so foreign to Watson at the moment.

He turned away from the window and his eyes fell on the empty bed. He was alone. He would have to get some sleep but there was no one to fall asleep next to, nor was there anyone to sit in the dark and smoke with. He would have to try to sleep, but he feared the nightmares might return. The moment he closed his eyes he was fully exposed to the white mists again, to men rising from their watery graves, to the dreadful, guilt-filled dreams of running, running, running against time, back to the falls, only to see Holmes falling... and the dreams of finding him, cold and pale, empty and lifeless...

Watson went back to bed and pulled the covers over him. They could not bring warmth to his shivering body, they could not soothe his uneasy mind, they could not give him the company he so dearly missed. He was alone in his house, alone in London, and in the dark of the night there were nothing but nightmares for him.

John closed his eyes.


End file.
